The Big Green Bus comes to town

This Friday, July 2nd, from 11am to 3pm, a group of twelve Dartmouth undergraduates traversing the country in a veggie oil-fueled bus will be stationed at the Newcomb Plaza to show off their sustainably run vehicle and offer advice and share tips on how to simultaneously simplify one's life and save money and resources.

From their website: "Our mission is to help create a future that sustains people, the environment, and the economy. We promote simple lifestyle changes that conserve money, energy, and resources through improving efficiency in every day activities."

If you're in the area, stop by Newcomb Plaza for what is sure to be some good, thought-provoking discussion. A few sustainability representatives from UVa, including Sustainability Outreach Coordinator Nina Morris and I, will also be on hand to share the UVa perspective.

Sustainable Agriculture Resource Library

Aside from coming to see all of the lovely staff members over here in the Dining Admin Office, you now have another reason to pay a visit to the ground floor of O-Hill Dining Hall: Dining officially is home to a small but strong sustainable ag resource library! Book topics run the gamut from food justice to fast food exposes; from the locavore movement to the US reliance on government farm subsidies -- truly a fascinating range, and indicative of the myriad problems and solutions to our food system along with displaying the many angles from which sustainable food can be approached.

This library is geared towards students, of course, but is open to all members of the University community. Everyone is encouraged to stop by the Dining Admin Office and venture into the conference room to check out what's on the shelf.

Titles include:

Bringing it to the Table - Wendell Berry

Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty - Mark Winne

Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly - James McWilliams

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader - Joan Dye Gussow

Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It - Anna Lappe

Fields of Plenty: A Farmer's Journey in Search of Real Food and the People that Grow It - Michael Ableman

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats - Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusio

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health - Marion Nestle

What Are People For? - Wendell Berry

In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver

The Garden and Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson - Thomas Jefferson

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal - Eric Schlosser

Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet - Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon

Having hand-picked (and read nearly) all of the titles with some helpful student input, I can assure you that working your way through this library will ensure your development into a well-educated and sophisticated foodie... and I mean that in the best possible sense. Happy reading!

Summertime in the Dining office

There haven't been many events to advertise or reflect upon as of late, but despite the students' summer absence, Dining has been surprisingly busy. There is plenty of behind the scenes work going on, particularly as we are opening several new retail locations in the fall.

I paid a recent visit to the Local Food Hub warehouse and got to see what they currently had in stock -- there was a great variety of produce and other items like locally bottled water, eggs, cider, and more on the shelves. They also have these neat produce boxes that come labeled with the type of vegetable (say, broccoli) in which they can store the appropriate veggies -- speeds up the identification process in the chilly walk-in cooler! I am excited to see our relationship with them grow and develop in time for the beginning of the next academic year and the hungry appetites sure to pass through the dining halls.

The UVa Community Garden is also a lush looking spot right across the street from O-Hill dining hall. I had a short-lived but delightful near-daily strawberry foraging excursion when they were still in season. The most satisfying moment came when I spotted a couple of UVa employees looking curiously at the garden as they walked past; I called out to them and invited them over to taste the strawberries fresh off the vine. There was a look of genuine pleasure as they savored those mouthfuls of bursting-with-ripeness sweetness.

Don't forget to check out the Green Dining calendar for community food-related events happening throughout the summer -- students may be away, but the produce is coming in, and now is the time to enjoy it, be it volunteering at the Local Food Hub farm, having a local food dinner at one of your favorite area wineries, going out to one of a number of local u-pick operations, or just gardening or cooking in your own yard or kitchen.

CNE-hosted Local Food Meeting

I recently received an email regarding a Summer Networking Series that the Charlottesville-based Center for Nonprofit Excellence was putting together. Their first topic, as determined "through conversations, articles, and the local drum beat," was on local food and community gardens. Upon witnessing the crowd that turned out at yesterday's meeting (held at the downtown Jefferson Madison Regional Library), all I can say is that the folks at CNE sure have their finger on the pulse of our local community -- wow! There were about 60 people in attendance, representing a myriad of community projects and interests: JABA, Local Food Hub, IRC, The Haven, UVa, QCC Farms!, Charlottesville Cooking School, several elementary school gardens, and even a woman who simply introduced herself as "an interested community member."

After a brief round of introductions, the audience was divided into smaller working groups -- community gardens, small-scale local food operations, and institutional food. As the group began to subdivide, it quickly became obvious where the need for change lay: over half of the attendees identified themselves as part of the institutional food group. We spent about 45 minutes discussing the challenges to integrating local food into an institutional setting, and then attempted to match up or identify experts that could provide solutions to those problems. Expertise is certainly abundant in this vibrant community, but the challenges were numerous, and almost seemed to multiply as we sat there conversing. The overarching theme, however, emerged as one of stronger communication and a need for accessible resources, perhaps via an aggregate website or even simply a facebook group.

The hour and a half allotted for this meeting was obviously not enough to even begin to tackle the numerous issues, but CNE staff are compiling the notes and brainstorming ideas that came out of our discussions, and I look forward to seeing them organized in some coherent and cohesive way. Certainly, having so many of us trying to come together collaboratively for such a brief time almost felt a bit like network speed-dating, but I hope it's the first of many such conversations. Thanks again to CNE for bringing everyone together to discuss an issue for which many have such passion!

Reusable To-Go Program Wrap-Up

With exams signifying the end of the academic year and the end of the time frame to cash in on one's meal plan benefits, reusable to-go program participants had the chance to return their key cards in exchange for being refunded their $7 security deposit. 321 UVa community members (mostly students with a handful of faculty) participated in the reusable to-go container program's inaugural year and about a third of them returned their key cards in order to get back the $7. Hereford Residential College provided the option of free participation, as their administration agreed to underwrite the cost of unreturned containers. The final verdict is still out on this experiment, but few students took advantage of the free sign-up and even fewer returned the materials last week. This brings up an interesting facet of human psychology: "free" may catch one's attention, but the presence of a fee may prompt users to have even a slightly more vested interest in the program. My personal opinion is that a refundable deposit provides the best of both worlds.

Since students had to return their key cards to the Dining Admin Office to receive their refunds, I had the chance to briefly interact with many of them, and the general consensus on the containers were: "They were great. It was an easy way for me to make a difference and reduce my environmental impact."

Some other specific email comments I received include:

"I would just like to say thank you for the re-usable program! I have found it incredibly easy and convenient to use! I hope it can continue in the coming years."

"I think the program has come a long way since the beginning of the school year and I definitely see more people using it. "

"The containers worked great."

"I loved the program, and I will definitely be doing it again next year!"

If you didn't try out reusable to-go containers this year, you'll be able to sign up next year. The program will be very similar, but keep your eyes open for some extra incentives to sweeten the deal a bit more...

Earth Week Re-cap, Awards, and more

What a month! I am finally back at my desk long enough to share some news and pictures that have accumulated over the past few weeks.

At the beginning of the month, I attended the 21st annual Environment Virginia symposium, a two-day conference open to sustainability professionals from the public and private sector from across the state. This was the first year that the conference included a "Viable and Sustainable Farms" track, among the more traditional concurrent sessions like "Land Conservation" and "Chesapeake Bay". The agriculture track was host to a varied array of sessions like wholesale distribution of local food, cultivating the next generation of Virginia's farmers, and tracking and accounting BMPs (Best Management Practices).

A number of additional UVa reps joined me in Lexington that evening for the 2010 Governor's Environmental Excellence Awards ceremony and banquet. UVa received a Silver Award for our Food Waste Composting Project; quite an honor to be recognized for that work.

Back on Grounds it was back to preparing for the sustainability world's biggest holiday: Earth Day (April 22nd, of course). This year, being the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Unity Project and other UVa student groups and departments banded together to create a truly impressive line-up of events and activities over the course of what became known as Earth Week. Check out the calendar from last week on the recently revamped UVa Sustainability website: Earth Week Calendar.

UVa Dining hosted a couple of events during this week-long celebration; namely the Earth Day bEARTHday Cookout last Monday as well as the Earth Day Prize Package Giveaway. The Cookout included some local food items (the menu consisted of local grass-fed burgers from Wolf Creek Farm, as well as potato salad made with potatoes from the Shenandoah Valley), live music by Trees on Fire, EMPSU prizes and raffles, and a display of the number of disposable to-go containers used at O-Hill in one week. The number is 4,700 (yes, in a single week!), by the way.

Dining's Prize Package was one of the culminating Earth Week events, on Earth Day itself: prize winners earned a spot for them and a friend to attend a private Dining-catered Farm to Fork dinner, chartered bus transport downtown, and tickets to the Ben Harper concert that evening at the Charlottesville Pavilion. The student winners had a great time and really liked the local dinner as well as the show. I was pleased to hear a few self-proclaimed foodies explain that though Ben Harper was a nice perk, they had entered in the raffle specifically for the chance to enjoy a local meal! With ingredients sourced from the Local Food Hub and Retail Relay, who could resist such a series of delightful spring fresh dishes?

Dining participated in several other events, like the Alternative Transportation Fair (I got to make my own bike-smoothie!), the StudCo Green Reception, Free Coffee Hour at the Fine Arts Cafe, and the Sustainability @ UVA Earth Day Extravaganza. Myself and other student volunteers manned the Green Dining info table, and in particular highlighted the unveiling of our two new frequent user punch cards: one for reusable to-go containers, and the other for reusable bags. These cards are both good through the end of the semester, so pick them up now so you can rack up punches to redeem the cards for the giveaways.

On a final note, yesterday I attended the Planning Department's Food Systems Planning Course panel on Local Food Heroes in our community. The line-up and the insight that all of the panelists shared with the audience made me realize (once again) that Charlottesville really is a hotbed of all-stars that are genuinely committed to ensuring economic vitality, farmland preservation, and access to healthy diets by way of creating a local food system. I left that panel sufficiently inspired to end the semester with a bang -- to that end, please join other students and administrators at our final Green Dining meeting of the year next Tuesday, May 4th, at 1pm in Hotel E. We'll analyze Earth Week and other events, as well as brainstorm projects to tackle next year. Hope to see you there!

Mark Winne lecture next Tuesday, April 6

Consider joining members of the University and Charlottesville communities at next week's Mark Winne lecture, sponsored by the Architecture School's spring 2010 Community Food System Planning course, the Student Planning Association, and UVa Dining!

Food Rebels and Smart Cookin' Mamas: Fighting Back in the Age of Industrial Agriculture

Even while local food systems are careening into mainstream American culture, today's economic climate is also prompting a brand new segment of the American population to utilize food stamps and other measures against increasing hunger. How do we confront the obstacles to realizing a sustainable food system with fairness and sensitivity? Food insecurity expert Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap as well as former Executive Director of the Hartford Food System, will speak on these and other community food system topics including local and regional agriculture, community food assessment, and food policy. Reception to follow.

Where: Campbell Hall, Room 158

When: Tuesday, April 6, 5:30-6:30pm